CHM 148: Raising Our Kids with Deep Faith Roots, with Christie Thomas

Welcome to the Christian homeschool Mom's podcast. You're listening to episode one forty eight. Hi everyone, I'm Demitria, your host, and I'm a veteran homeschool mama of two wonderful daughters, one in college and one in high school. I'm also a wife, a songwriter, a podcaster, and a child of the King. And I'm really happy to be your host today. So this podcast is sponsored by Faith Media and Impact podcast Coach, which is a service that supports women podcasters to boldly share their voices and their powerful messages through the medium of podcasting. And you can find out more about our podcast coaching services and courses by visiting Impact podcastcoach dot com. So I hope you enjoyed my last episode where I shared information about homes going high school. I've been meaning to help you guys with your homeschooling endeavors over the course of the summer, so I've been podcasting a little bit more regularly, and I hope that you are enjoying the content. If you're new here, you can also find loads of information about homeschooling at my website, which is Christian Homeschoolmoms dot com. So my goal is to inspire and encourage you with your homeschooling endeavors. And part of that journey of homeschooling as a Christian woman is raising up our kids in a particular way, in a spiritual way. So creating a Christian home environment and a faith field environment to raise our kids takes being proactive. So how exactly do we develop a plan that we can put into action in order to raise our kids in this particular way that can sometimes feel extremely countercultural, A way in which we can infuse the Word of God into our family lifestyle and allow the raising of our kids and the teaching and mentoring of our kids to be an everyday part of our lives that feels natural and authentic. And so that's why I brought my guest on today. Her name is Christy Thomas. She is a Western Canadian homeschool mom of three boys, and she spends her evenings helping Christian parents disciple their kids without having to know it all or do it all. She's also the author of several books for Christian parents, and we'll talk more about that closer to the end of the interview, but you can find Christy online at Little Shootsdeeproots dot com, or you can also download her Fruit of the Spirit resources at Fruit of the spiritbook dot com. So we're going to get straight into this interview. Christie's going to help us to figure out how to integrate faith, Bible studies, talking about God, everything that we want to do as spiritual parents of faith with raising our kids. So let's figure that out together on this podcast over the next couple of minutes. And I'll be back at the end of the interview for announcements and to give some last words of encouragement to you. So I hope you enjoy the interview. Hi, everybody, welcome to the Christian Homeschool Mom's podcast. I have with me today Christy Thomas, and she is a Western Canadian homeschool mom of three boys. She spends her evenings helping Christian parents disciple their kids without having to know it all or do it all, which is what we want to know about today. So she is the author of several books for Christian parents, and we're going to find out about those books and all that Christie has to offer. First of all, thank you so much for being here today, Christy. Glad to have you, but I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You said that you are a West Canadian mom, so I want to hear a little bit about where you live and your family and just tell us all about yourself. Sure. So I live near Edmonton, Alberta, which I think if I drove straight south for about eight hours, I would hit Montana. So that gives you some perspective on what part of one's Canada. So, yeah, I have three boys. I've been homeschooling them for the last four years. We started just before COVID, so it was pretty good timing for us, but we had the chance to make the choice before, you know, it was foisted upon us before that. I was a children's pastor for over ten years, and I've worked in children's ministry for years before that as well, So I was doing that for a long time and now I'm not doing that, not officially anyway. And then I homeschool my boys. My husband works for the public school board, which sometimes makes for interesting conversations. That's the nice dichotomy of like, Okay, so what's happening in this arena versus at home? So yeah, exactly, it's pretty interesting he's a tech consultant, so he's not really into, you know, a lot of the politics of but it it is. It's still interesting to hear his perspective on things as well. So it's been I bet it is. So what are some of your favorite pastimes? Things do you like to do? Oh? When do I have time for pastimes? Right? Okay? So well, the things that I like to do I've tended to turn into the parts of my job. So I do like to write. I like to write children's stories. I've written a lot of children's stories that have not gotten published, but I still love to write them anyway. I write them for my kids. I love to garden. I love to make music. So I play on the worship team at church sometimes and sometimes I help out in the preschool class at church as well, which I still love. Even though I'm not the children's pastor anymore. I still love being involved in that. So I just love a little kids. I love growing things. I love growing children. I love growing plants. Awesome, because that leads right into my next question, because you have a ministry called Little Shoots Deep Roots, and you said you like to plant, so that kind of reminds me of the name of your business. So can you tell me more about this? What is this a business a ministry? What do you do? And how did you coin the name? Okay, so as to what it is, I heard somebody say once they call this kind of thing a business tree. It's like a ministry that has business aspects to it, so that some people pay, and then the people that can pay pay for what they want, and then it allows me to do some things for free for other people. So it's nice. It's yeah, Okay, it is exactly. So it came out of a time when I was trying to figure out this what message God wanted me to share with moms. I as working in children's ministry. I saw a lot of kids that were growing or weren't growing in their faith, and I became more and more passionate about parent involvement at home and how that could look. And I realized just a couple of years ago when I changed my ministry name to Little Shoots Deep Roots, that every Christian mom can disciple her kids without needing to know it all or do it all through little habits that add up over time. So the Little Shoots refers My intention was for it to refer to the little habits that we instill in our days that help us draw our children back to Christ over and over. But it can also be like little kids. And then the deep roots refers to obviously deep faith roots in our kids. So these little shoots, these little habits in our little children can lead to date deep faith roots at our kids. And I think of Ephesians three seventeen to nineteen. It's one of my favorite verses. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in Him, And may your roots grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And I said may you, because I often pray this one as a blessing over my children. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide and how long, and how high and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully, so you may be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. And that really is kind of I mean, not obviously the guiding verse of my ministry. I don't like have it posted or anything, but it's really one that is deep in my hearts. That is what I want my children's faith roots to grow down into God's love to keep them strong. Wow. And when moms who have that passion to teach their kids the words of God and to instill that deeply in their children, you make time and you figure out ways, like you said, the small shoots or the different the ways that you can get the Word of God into your children, teaching them instilling that. So some moms and dads might be uncomfortable with the idea of teaching their kids the Bible. And I've talked about this on a few other podcasts, but it is something that comes up that I hear a lot more, you know, And I think it's just maybe the discomfort, you know, feeling like, well, we're not qualified enough, or maybe I'm going to teach them something the wrong way, maybe my theology is not just right, or maybe I should leave it to the youth pastor or what have you. But the Word of God tells us to raise up our kids in the ways of the Lord and when their old thing won't apart from it. So since we have that responsibility, and even if we don't feel capable of doing it, there's got to be a way to do it. So and what are some reasons that you believe that some parents might find it hard to share the gospel or to share the deeper truths of the Bible. I think there's there are a lot of reasons, and I have kind of boiled them down to a few main reasons. As I've been hearing from parents over the years, I often send out an email saying, just you know, what's your greatest struggle with discipling your kids? And they usually they kind of sort themselves into these four categories. And I myself have struggled with this as well. So I told you that I was a children's pastor for many years, so I was really good at coming up with a Sunday school program and teaching a Sunday school lesson. That does not necessarily translate into being able to lead my kids on a daily basis in natural conversation. So this actually is a struggle that I really dealt with. I don't come I started talking about this because I needed to learn how to do this, not because I had it all figured out. So some of the things that people have told me and that I've experienced myself are well, First of all, the time factor, I don't have time, or I'm too busy. My husband doesn't help is a big one. My husband's not interested. And that is something that I've dealt with as well, is that my husband went through hasn't been through like a fifteen your faith crisis. So he loves what I do, and he's a huge supporter of what I do, but he does not This is not a passion of his. At home, he's like, you do this, go for it, like I love that you're doing it. You're called to do yeah, exactly. So another thing is that you know, parents say my kids aren't interested. They're too if they're little, they're too scormy, and if they're older, they're rolling your eyes. They're just not interested. And then the fourth thing is that I'm afraid I'll do it wrong. And it's not Sometimes it's I'm afraid i'll give them bad theology. But sometimes it's also I'm afraid that I'll push it on my kids. Because we've all heard somebody say my parents shoved it down my throat, and now I don't want any of that anymore. So we're afraid that we're going to do that to our kids accidentally, that we're going to shove it down their throats and they're going to turn away from us. So the method that I teach this tiny little habits idea. I'm talking about things that take like a maximum of one minute. It actually solves all these problems. So when we're talking about things that take a minute or less, we don't have to worry about time because everyone's got thirty seconds, you know, in the car or drop off, what you're waiting for the bus. You know. Oh wait, you're not dealing with that. That's home schools. We're talking to home schools. But you know, when you're you're you're in the car going your co op, or you're getting up in the morning and you're eating breakfast together or lunch together, everybody has thirty seconds. So that deals with the time factor. If your husband doesn't help it, doing these little tiny things also helps well because it also can kind of slowly change the culture of your home. And I have seen families where they do these tiny little things and their husband does jump on board because they're like, oh, that's easy, I can do that. Yeah, if your kids aren't interested or they're really squirming, doing something in really short snippets makes a big difference because your teams don't really have time to rule their eyes, and your little ones don't have time to get you know, to get squirming or whatever. And then also, if we're afraid that we're going to do it wrong somehow, we're going to push it on our kids, we're gonna give them bad theology. And when we're starting with tiny little things and just allowing God to move us forward in gentle ways, then we don't We can release that fear or that we're going to do it wrong because we can trust that God is with us. We're just taking tiny steps in step with him, tiny steps. I love that, one step at a time. And when we're not overwhelmed with the big picture and all of the theology, and that's not what it's about, you know, And when we're not overwhelmed with that, then we can take the little, tiny chunks and make a big difference in our lives a few minutes at a time. So do you have any specific ways we can integrate that. Let's say we're driving our kids to coop or something. How are we delivering that message of gospel truths? Are we sharing scripture and encouragement or praying for them, or are we teaching them something from the Bible, like what do we do during those few minutes? Well, you can do whatever God is leading you to do. So I found in my life that often I'm like, oh, I want to be doing more of that, but I don't have time for that. So that's when God talked, like reminds me that, Okay, this is where I've called you too, and yes, I do want you to take a step forward. And usually what I need to do next is pretty clear to me. So you might be thinking, oh, I really need to get more scripture memory into my family. So then you start thinking, okay, what would be a natural time to do scripture memory with my kids? Maybe we could do it every time we get in the car, as we you know, we buckle in and we practice our memory verse. Because then it doesn't matter if you're getting in the car two days a week or seven days a week. Whenever you get in the car, you buckle in and you practice your memory verse. If you want to be praying more with your kids again, can you kind of weave it naturally into your day, connecting it to something that you're already doing in your day regularly. So let's say that you wanted to start praying the Lord's prayer with one of your children. You wanted to teach them to them, teach the Lord's prayer to them so that they can learn how to pray more deeply. Well, you're probably tucking your child into bed every night, even if it's just a really short tuck in, so you could do it. Then you could, you know, as you're pulling the covers up, and instead of just saying good night, you say, okay, let's pray together. The one that I love the most that I have seen make massive outside differences in people's lives is simply praying a scriptural blessing over your child at night. So it may seem really obvious, and it may be something that a lot of families are doing, although in my experience there's like one family in every fifty that's already doing this. So there's always somebody that's like, oh, you know, my parents taught me to do that, But a lot of people are saying, oh, I never did that. So here's what you do. You as, just before you walk out the door, you say something like, may the Lord bless you and keep you, May he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you may turn his face toward you and give you peace, or you choose a verse that you know your child needs. The one that I mentioned before, the Ephesians one is one that I was praying over my son for about four years, which is why it's kind of embedded itself pretty deeply in my heart. So it seems really simple. You think, Okay, how can this how long did that take me? Fifteen seconds? How could this fifteen second thing have a deep impact in my life? But it actually does, and it's because we're talking about we're praying the Bible of our kids. This is I'm not talking about just you know, speaking affirmations over your kids. I've seen books, even Christian books that are like, oh you know, I love you and God loves you, and those are awesome things. But I think there's power in speaking the actual Bible, God's words, especially God's blessing that he gave to the priests over our children. So I've seen I've been teaching this for fifteen years now, so I've been able to see families change as a result of this tiny little thing. So I have a friend whose kids are she fosters and adopts and some of her kids. Some of her kids are biological anyway. One of them was born addicted to cocaine and and has FASD and ADHD like all the all the things. And he wasn't supposed to be able to memorize scripture like that was just kind of out of the realm of They weren't going to expect that for him or implement scripture in any kind away in his life. But they pray. They prayed Joshua one nine over him for years and years, and one day she comes into the room and he's preaching to his little sister. He's saying, do not be afraid or discourage for the lurgure. God is with you wherever you go, because she's afraid, and he's taking it in context. Not only has he memorized it, he's preaching it to his sister in context, and so like there's just like that that thing that healed in his brain as a result of this. I have had parents tell me that they start praying this over their children at night and their children start sleeping better right away. I have had parents tell me that their children's children lose their anxiety over going to sleep at night, and as a result of that. I had one family tell me years ago. So they were in one of my earliest classes, so probably about fifteen years ago. She told me. A couple of years later, oh, you know, my kids started sleeping better at night, they stopped having nightmares, and then so we could get up in the morning and everybody was happier. So I started doing this twenty minute Bible and prayer time in the morning. And so think of all the fruit that happened over the last decade as a result of her just doing this tiny little thing. And I've had parents tell me, Like I said before, I've had I recently had a mom tell me, oh, I started doing this, but then I was away a few nights. So my husband took it over and he's like, I love this, this is so easy. I love that we're doing this. And so now he is doing it for the kids. Like all these amazing things that are happening as a result of one tiny little thing. I just am always thinking of Jesus with those five loaves of bread and two fish, and he says, all I want is for you to just bring me what you have. Take bring me the little bit that you have, and I am going to make it into something good. I'm the one who brings the increase, not you. Yes, yes, that's the key, and that takes the load off of us as moms so that we don't feel like, well, we're responsible for making sure we shove it down our children start stuff out. What we're doing, we're giving them something very special and very it's like a little almost like a little dessert, something beautiful is something they want, right, and so we give that to them every day. And it's medicine. The Word of God says that you know, the word is healing. It's it's like medicine for us. And so I love that we can depend on the power of God's word to do all the work and all we have to do is be that willing vessel to deliver it to our children. It's a great way to put it. I love that. Okay, we're just like the in between, right, We're just doing the work, but God does the actual work. So I love that. Um, Okay, So I'm wondering, I know you have some products that help us to actually do this. How can you're like, tell us about your products and how we can use them as moms in our everyday life. With our children and get the word into our kids. Absolutely. So I have I have some books. I'll tell you about them in a minute. But if you if this is something that your listeners are like, I need to know how to do this, I kind of have a three step process that you can so that you can follow. So first of all, you can go to my website, my homepage, Little Shoots Deep Roots dot com, and you can sign up for what I call the Start Little Guide, and it's free and it kind of walks you through just the very basics of starting little in your family with these little, tiny habits. And then at the back of that, there's a link that if you want more. If you're thinking this is cool, I really need you to walk me through it a little bit more. I have a one hour training that you can watch, which is also free, and in the training, I both walk you through it a little bit more, but I also take you a little bit deeper and show you how this could be, like there's so much more to this and how to actually do this in your life. So I have a monthly membership that you can join that I share in the training. So the training is like partly, you know, just teaching, and then partly at the end, I share a little bit more about how you can go deeper. And so then I have these monthly Bible studies that we can do that we do with our kids, that help us actually read the Bible with our kids, and ways that don't feel overwhelming, that you can do in like five minutes a day, but helps you read the actual Bible, yeah, which is fun. And I teach you how to get these little habits into your day and anyway. So that's kind of my online the business treaty part. And then I also have these books that do everything that I have done. I realized after because I started the Little Shoots Deep Roots thing a couple of years ago, but my first book came out in twenty fifteen, and I realized that I've been following this principle my whole life. I just didn't even know it. So my first book is a preschool devotional. I wrote it when my oldest was two and he's now fourteen. So I started writing it for him and for the people in my church. I started sending it out as take home pages because I was the children's pastor, so I could foist it on them. So it's really just a simple interactive basically a Bible study for little ones. So you spend five days on the same Bible story, you interact it with it in different ways that are really simple. You don't need supply, but just in ways that you know your two to six year old will actually really engage with. And so my son, he went to a Christian school for kindergarten, and his kindergarten teacher one of the things that I she was like, Wow, he has a lot of biblical knowledge. He knows a lot about the Bible. And I was kind of shocked that. I thought, we're only doing like three minutes a day. But we've been consistent in these three minutes a day using this book that I had created. So it's not it's not my book. That was the magic there. It was, you know, the consistent, like you said, being that vessel three minutes a day. So that's that. And then out of that came these two picture books, Quinn's Promise Rock and quin Says Goodbye, And they're really just about where is God when I'm anxious? Where is God when I'm dealing with loss? And they're both they're both hope filled books. They're not sad books. Quinn says, Goodbye may sound like a sad book, but it ends on a really hopeful note. And then out of that came Mother's Son Prayer Journal because I have the three boys. Wow, okay, it's a it's a prayer journal, but that's also a devotional. It's a little bit. When I was first trying to figure out how to put it together, I was like, my brain hurts. So you start by asking your son a question, and then he asked you back the same question, so like have you ever been bullied in your life or something like that, and then he gets to ask you that as well, so you're getting to know each other a little bit deeper. And then there's a really short devotional on the life or the writings of David. And then there is a really short section like basically a prayer prompt for your son. And I know that lots of boys and probably girls too, don't love writing, so I created them so that they would not feel overwhelming for boys. And I also suggest that if your boy doesn't like to write, that you just write down his answer for him. Make it easy, exactly, make it easy. And then there's also a space on each devotional to write your own prayers for your son based on what you've just talked about. So that's that one that one has been really was really to do. And in my last book is Fruitful. It's a hundred family experiences for growing in the Fruit of the Spirit. So it's a pretty like traditional devotional book, which is funny because I actually really don't love using I don't use a lot of devotional books with my kids. But I was like, I really want to write a devotional book that I love, So I wrote it in a way that felt like it's basically a walk through the Gospels because we're looking at how Jesus exhibits the fruit of the spirit in his everyday life and in his teachings. How does he show love and enjoy and peace and patience and you know the list. Yeah, so, and then there's discussion questions so you can talk about it. I have some extra activities that you can do with it to help kind of solidify it, help your child see where God is helping them grow in the fruit of the spirit as well. So that's the Fruitful Book. Okay, wow, that's a lot of resources and I'm sorry, Oh, it's good because the more you have available for parents, the more help we get. So I think it's almost like we don't have like in today's society and where we are with the information age and now into kind of the new age that we're getting into. But information is all around us, material content, helps, resources, they're available for us, and you're one of those who are allowing the Lord to use you to provide those resources for parents of faith, and I just think that's a wonderful thing. I'm glad you're doing it. Thank you for what you do and for your heart of ministry and service to the Kingdom of God. So thank you for that. Because our children they need us to be available to them and we need the tools to figure out how to do it. So thank you. Well, how can our listeners reach you? Give us your website one more time, and then if you have any specific sign up ages or how do we get the downloads and all of that. The easiest thing is just to go to my homepage on my website Little Shoots Deep roots dot com. So if you just scroll down about halfway down the page, it's a big thing that does get the start little guide, so it's pretty obvious. So you can go there, you can sign up for that. It kind of will if you follow that, it'll take you on the progression of the start little guide to the free training to the membership is at Floats your Boat and then also on the homepage there, if you click over, it says books. So there's a page for my books. You can see more information about each of my books. So I think it's pretty well organized. Okay, but if people would like to do roots, yeah, and if people would like to connect with me, I'm pretty active on Instagram at Little Shoots Deep Roots, so that's easy to remember. I hope never perfect. Thank you so much for being with us today. It has been a pleasure and I enjoy talking with you. I've enjoyed this too, Thanks so much. I really hope that you enjoy today's interview with Christy Thomas. I love that she gave us some practical tips to help us figure out how to integrate God's word into our children's lives in very practical ways. We're not perfect, we're not all theologians, and we don't have it all together because many times we're just trying to figure out our own relationships with God for ourselves. But we do have a commandment from God to teach her children in the ways of the Lord so that when they're older, they won't depart from His ways. So some of the practical tips that Christie shared with us is to number one, pray with our kids before they go to sleep. I think that is a beautiful and very simple way to make sure that our kids understand how much they're loved and protected. Number two, recite Scripture over them constantly. So if we can always be sharing with them what God says about them through Scripture is going to help them to understand their importance in the Kingdom of God. And number three, praying a scriptural blessing over your kids before they leave the house. So whether they're going to homeschool, coop or going to school, going somewhere, when you pray over your kids and pray a blessing that comes straight from God's word from Scripture, it allows your child to hear God's perfect will for them being spoken to them through their parents, and so that makes a big difference in their worldview and how they approach their relationship with God. When you make it real and you make it authentic. So I hope that you really enjoyed this week's show, I did, and I don't have a lot of announcements for you. I just want to make sure that you know how to reach our guests at Little Shoots Deep Roots dot com. Be sure to check her out and download the Fruit of the Spirit resources. You can also visit her at Fruit of the spiritbook dot com to find out more about her resources. And if you would love to hear more podcasts like this, you can visit Christian homeschool Moms dot com. I'd love to have you there. Also, if you're interested in starting your own podcast again, I will direct you to Impact Podcastcoach dot com and I'm going to leave all of the links to these resources in the show notes. And next time we're going to talk more about helping our kids in the different phases of their life starting homeschooling. If you're just getting started, I'm going to be addressing different age groups over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for the upcoming podcasts that I have on the radar, and I hope to be of help to you before you get started with your homeschool year. So until next time, Happy Homeschooling.